Serious legal concerns have been raised about a proposed new law on assisted suicide, raising a doubt over whether it can proceed [1] in its current form.
The Dying with Dignity Bill, introduced last year by socialist TD Gino Kenny, is currently being reviewed by the Oireachtas Committee on Justice after a Dáil vote in October to allow it proceed to committee stage. As part of that process, a confidential legal opinion was drafted by the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers.
A copy of that opinion, seen by The Irish Times, raises a range of concerns including that parts of the Bill would be vulnerable to a constitutional challenge as they were an “overdelegation of ministerial power” which case law had found to be incompatible with the Constitution.
It identifies “ambiguities and serious drafting errors” in several sections of the Bill, containing flaws that could render them vulnerable to challenge before the courts.
It also finds that it has no enforceable compliance or offence provisions, “which is hugely problematic for this legislation given the statements from both the Irish Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights on the utmost importance of safeguards in legislation such as this”.